Joel R. Fried is currently Professor of Chemical Engineering and Fellow of the Graduate School at the University of Cincinnati. He has received BS and a ME degrees in Chemical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and MS and PhD degrees in Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). At Cincinnati, he has held positions of Director of the Polymer Research Center and Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Cincinnati. Previously to his academic appointment at Cincinnati in 1978, Professor Fried was an Associate Staff Member at the Corporate Research and Development Center of GE (Schenectady, NY) and a Senior Research Engineer at the… Corporate Research and Development Center of Monsanto (St. Louis). Professor Fried has authored more than 150 papers, book chapters, and patents and books in the course of his career.